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I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

i3wm.org

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Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#121

Post by jeromenerf »

diffeomorphism wrote: post #90
veddox wrote: post #57

I love the concept of tiling WMs, and wish mainstream WMs would adopt more of their features. But quite frankly, I just find all the tiling WMs I know just horribly ugly... (And I'm not quite sure why, but that is actually one of the biggest reasons why I don't use them anymore.)

What do you even see of a tiling wm? They don't have window decorations, you can use any panel, so the "look" is a blank screen.

I3 actually has decorations, with a title bar and borders.

Still it retains the pretty utilitarian aesthetics common to most twm. I don’t mind it but some might prefer gui to terms, docks to panels, desktop icons, wallpaper and widgets to a dense grid of windows.

My wife tends to “shake” the windows she is unhappy with. The zoom client app mostly. I would not fare to suggest non shakable UI.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#122

Post by sto_hristo »

Used i3 fulltime for more than a year. It's great for building extremely lightweight environments that will run on any machine.

The productivity side of it is slightly exaggerated (in terms of tiling vs stacking manager), and i didn't find myself saving so much time. One thing i've always missed from the stacking manager is the window overlap - i do that quite often, especially when reading something while doing stuff on another window - most sites have side panels that don't react well to changing window sizes and with stacking window, you can just place them optimally and hide the stuff you don't want to see.

The only issue i've had with it is how it handled popups. For example the andoid emulator window was a pain, also some dialog windows.

I don't think i will be ever coming back to tiling WMs. It was nice infatuation.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#123

Post by im3w1l »

RMPR wrote: post #63
im3w1l wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to use a tiling wm but now that everything supports dragging windows into a side of the screen to make them take up half the screen, I find that my main usecase of tiling wm's: side-by-side windows, is handled well enough that I don't want to put up with the occasional annoyances. The main pain point of stock ubuntu gnome for me right now is that when I open too many windows, my alt-tab becomes too cluttered,…

You might be interested by this Gnome extension http://gfxmonk.net/shellshape/

So this made me look into extensions more generally, and I ended up getting dash-to-panel which solves my grouping issue!

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#124

Post by d_tr »

bitigchi wrote: post #27

Probably an unpopular opinion here, but I do not understand why people prefer tiling window managers. I prefer to have lots of windows open, and being able to position them how I want with the size I want greatly increases my productivity. Tiling window managers makes you conform to their way of working.

At least some tiling window managers are very flexible. The only tiling window manager I have used for a substantial amount of time is Sway, and it doesn't actually make it any harder to move and resize windows however you want than it is in, say, Gnome or Plasma. You can move and resize floating as well as tiled windows with drag and drop, and you additionally have lots of automatic arrangement options when you need them.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#125

Post by jeromenerf »

makepanic wrote: post #2

Sadly it's bound to X11. The alternative for me was to migrate to sway[1] to have a similar environment in wayland. [1] - https://github.com/swaywm/sway/

Sway is nice. Mostly a better i3, with great mouse support, easy multiple keyboard config, some aesthetic features, ... even the small tools around like swayidle, swaylock are fine.

The most difficult part was to find a good wayland terminal and I recommend “foot”, https://codeberg.org/dnkl/foot

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#126

Post by marcus_holmes »

sto_hristo wrote: post #122

Used i3 fulltime for more than a year. It's great for building extremely lightweight environments that will run on any machine. The productivity side of it is slightly exaggerated (in terms of tiling vs stacking manager), and i didn't find myself saving so much time. One thing i've always missed from the stacking manager is the window overlap - i do that quite often, especially when reading something while doing stuf…

I use i3 and the productivity for coding-type tasks is great. Fiddling with my i3 config and i3bar is a favourite procrastination, and I can genuinely say it's changed the way I use my computer.

But Zoom is a nightmare. It's clearly only designed to work with conventional windows. It opens new windows a lot, and each time it does that, i3 grabs the new window and puts it in whatever workspace my mouse is currently at. I'm constantly shifting Zoom windows between fullscreen and normal mode, and switching workspaces for them. Starting a breakout session immediately kills everything and I have to start moving everything around again.

I get that Zoom isn't optimising their application for Linux, and especially not for i3. Fair enough, I'm in a tiny market segment here. But it's annoying enough that I want to warn people who want to try i3 that (no fault of i3) some applications really don't work well with it.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#127

Post by bitigchi »

profsnuggles wrote: post #95
bitigchi wrote: post #27

Probably an unpopular opinion here, but I do not understand why people prefer tiling window managers. I prefer to have lots of windows open, and being able to position them how I want with the size I want greatly increases my productivity. Tiling window managers makes you conform to their way of working.

You may be talking about auto-tilers like xmonad. Those are the devil (joking, sorta). My favorite tiling window managers in order of preference would probably be exwm (emacs wm) -> stumpwm -> ratpoison -> i3. These are manual tiling wms. So in exwm I can chose how to position and resize my windows any way I want. For example I can hit C-x 3 to split my screen in half vertically then C-x 2 to split one of the vertica…

I think this is the most popular setup for tiling window managers, I use my terminal windows in this configuration as well (on a separate display). However, on my main display, I can't imagine going like this, most because:

- macOS "Zoom" functionality already takes care of the optimal content size.

- For websites, above zoom functionality works fine, but I prefer to manually resize my browser, since nearly all websites today have responsive design, and resizing gets rid of all the unnecessary parts, like sidebars, large margins etc. All I have left is the content.

- Today most application GUIs are way too bloated. I usually disable whatever I do not need, and use the macOS global menu search functionality a lot. I can reach any feature I want with a few keyboard clack. This way I can use software with minimal screen estate.

- If things get a bit crowded, Mission Control (Exposé) feature allows me to see what's going on very easily. macOS trackpad features also help a lot, with intuitive multi-finger gestures to see MC, show desktop, or show individual application windows.

- As a personal taste, I like to take the desktop metaphor a tad more seriously. I like to have file clusters on my desktop without the limitations of a grid, and file them to a folder later on when I'm done. Imagining my desktop as a real desktop just makes me more productive. I really cannot imagine myself using any other system other than macOS or Haiku just for this reason.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#128

Post by marcus_holmes »

gradstudent wrote: post #81
tazeg95 wrote: post #61

I switched to i3 from gnome. Now I don't waste time to resize, move, close, reduce windows with the mouse. Just learn a few keyboard shortcuts to do this, that you can set as you want. Moreover I was frustated about applets in the status bar, so I did it myself and it's easy with some bash and pyton : https://en.jeffprod.com/blog/2020/create-your-own-i3-sway-st...

Do your keyboard media keys work? One of the biggest gripes I had with i3 is things like volume, brightness, mute and so on. It's possible to configure everything to work again of course, but very painful. Other system related things that exist in gnome (wifi, bluetooth, sound, microphone) are also a pain to do without. Again, lots of tinkering needed to get things working anew.

I had to fix this - and fix VLC taking over my media keys if it ever started. I didn't find it too painful, but it's definitely annoying that I had to work this out myself.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#129

Post by nix23 »

julius wrote: post #55
mrweasel wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the same way. There are projects like EvilWM, which is still rather nice, that has the 1px border and looks alot like a tiling window manager. As I get old, I started to look more toward simple Windows managers, like OpenBox. I really do like having the buttons, and a window border I can actually hit with my pointer. Personally I think it would be fun if someone cloned Windows 3.11 and added a few ekstra keybo…

Hitting borders with a pointer is horrible. No matter the border size. A few years ago I learned that most Linux WMs allow you to use ALT+RightMouse to resize your window from anywhere (sometimes WIN+RightMouse, usually configurable).

>Linux WMs allow you to use ALT+RightMouse

Ehm..thanks...thanks allot!

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#130

Post by byecomputer »

jeromenerf wrote: post #112
byecomputer wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my little world, I don't need more than perhaps a few windows at attention simultaneously, and working out how to space them when it does happen is pretty breezy. The physical metaphor of dragging stuff works for me, too, and—while the Vim folks might ridicule me—I think the computer mouse is actually quite excellent and fills in the gaps quicker than remembering keyboard shortcuts for some things. Also really gre…

Sway, the i3 clone for wayland, actually allows to use the mouse to drag and drop a window or group of windows. This is something supported in other window managers. The best of both worlds? I agree that the mouse can be great and effective. Plan9 / Acme editor is a great example. I also like the additional buttons when browsing, you know, prev/next.

I appreciate the tip. GNOME 3, which I understand had a rocky start, has been honestly the most intuitive and usable desktop I've had yet, so I can't say I'm in the market for now. But it's always fun checking new things out, so I will keep those in mind.
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